Changing the Approach: Library and Information Science (LIS) Weaknesses Will Turn into Strength

Abstract

LIS has been originally defined as a discipline shaped by library as a place. The purpose of this paper is to clarify that this approach is not correct. The author, meanwhile, briefly answers the ten major problems in this regard, made by Nolin & Astrom. Through content analysis the text claims that the concept of LIS is not derived from library as a place; rather, it originates from the very man's need to information. The author states that the original concept of LIS does not suffer from weakness, if it is considered to have been originated from human need to information. However, the library as a place is a full-size manifestation of this need. Therefore, by changing the approach the major problems may be resolved. The paper provides a clear definition for LIS as a metadiscipline which deals interchangeably with all other fields of study.

Liberating Knowledge at the Margins

“…Of further interest for our purposes is his foregrounding of agency on the part of users and members of discourse communities, and the essential role of LIS in the ability of both to recognize, retrieve, and communicate relevant information. This is a view shared by Fadaie (2012), who eschews a functional focus on the library as a document-collecting institution to instead examine the "information needs of humans" exercising their intentionality in relation to systems of knowledge organization-which are themselves the result of the intentionality on the part of information providers (119).…”